Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Dar Williams - Local Artist

Listening to Dar Williams now, all I can think about is missing the concert I went to. This concert was on my last day back home, so it definitely resonates with me when I'm homesick.

Its actually pretty crazy in how I got tickets to the concert. While I was working my last week at Broadway Marketplace, I was on break. For the first time I saw a bulletin board of stuff from around the city, basically to find stuff in the community. And in large lettering, "Dar Williams." I thought it was a joke, because I thought she deserved more publicity then a poster. But it was in conjunction with a Chamber Society (that I wish I could recall the name of.) And then I thought, "well surely its past the date, or there's no more tickets." So that night I go online and find the tickets are still available, and the performance would be on my last day here. But I had no one to go with, and it was in Lexington, so I decided to let that dream die. As a throw away topic starter, I told my mom and she went nuts. She told me to buy them at that second, and so I did, and me and my mother went to the concert together.

My mom and I have definitely been closer since the end of high school and college, probably because of my going to an all woman campus, I have a better understanding and appreciation for everything she has done for me.

In arriving to the concert I was nervous, because my mother and I were "the young crowd." It was also taking place at a museum, so the auditorium was small. Before the show I bought 4 CDs, that I am listening to right now as a matter of fact. But we grabbed our seats, and my biggest regret is not bring any tissues.

The concert was Dar Williams, with the string quartet. When I say this, I mean it was Dar Williams with her acoustic, a fiddle, 2 violins, a viola, a cello, and a harp. All of her classics were followed with music composed to fit with her music. And there was nothing more beautiful then watching this concert unfold.

One of the hardest parts of this was when the harpist told a story. She mentioned that when she was finding places for the posters, she walked into a coffee shop and asked the barista if it was alright to put it up. The Barista screamed excitedly over the fact that Dar Williams would be in a concert near her. Then the Harpist and Barista had lunch, and the Barista went into a telling of how her best friend and her parked the car and blasted "The One Who Knows" the night before they went off to college.

This story scares me, because this is exactly what Jean and I did before we went off to our first years of school. We parked the car on a grand hill in Arlington, and we could see the Boston skyline, and listened and cried. The next day I hopped in a car to Minnesota.

Dar Williams then performed this song, and I now have a connection with both Jean and my mother. Not just with this song either, but just the idea of Dar Williams is home, and its in the strongest women figures I have in my life.

I have 4 CDS and then some of her music if you ever want to borrow it =)

Outside the Blog

I'm nineteen, born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in 2009, often referred to as CRLS. I am now attending school in St. Paul Minnesota, on the lovely campus of St. Catherine University. My career dream is to be teaching Theology and/or World Religions in a college classroom. I am obsessed with writing on personal experiences in full detail, and analyzing quotations I find. Feel free to email me if you ever want to chat it up or have any questions on my life (or find me on facebook.)